“Let me be as the Prophet Jonah! I was responsible for the storm, but I would sacrifice myself for the salvation of the ship. Seize me and throw me... I was not happy when I ascended the throne, and gladly would I descend it.”
Concerning his resignment from his office as Patriarch of Constantinople
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Gregory of Nazianzus 5
Christian saint, bishop, and theologian 329–389Related quotes
Context: I constantly get people telling me I should be selling as much as Katie Melua... but there's a reason she sells that many and I don't - she makes music that's easy on the ear and even easier on the brain. She's the perfect good girl in the middle of the road. I'm not keen to make things too easy for anyone. I like to provoke a response, whether that's someone telling me they love what I do or throwing a bottle at me. The trouble is that the bottle-throwing faction won't buy the album. You've immediately limited your audience.
“If happy I and wretched he,
Perhaps the king would change with me.”
"Differences" in The Collected Songs of Charles Mackay (1859).
Remarks to Theodor Wolff (5 February 1915), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 76
Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)
Context: My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it. It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless. I have often met with happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God for his mercy. But, by way of compensation, dire misfortune has befallen me in consequence of actions prompted by the most cautious wisdom. This would humble me; yet conscious that I had acted rightly I would easily derive comfort from that conviction.